Thursday, October 16, 2014

This!

"Put simply, the freedom to self-determine how to pass so much of their time has cultivated a certain sense of entitlement in my sons. […] Fin and Rye are enormously particular about how they pass their time. In the absence of school's daily schedule and demands that they must adhere to it, they have come to believe that their time belongs to them, and they are not always eager to deviate from whatever task they've set their minds upon.

[…]

"Often, Fin and Rye do what is asked of them willingly, but often they do not, and my anecdotal observations suggest to me that they are uncooperative somewhat more frequently than many of their peers. Some of this, I think, is simply the result of temperament. My sons are fiercely passionate creatures, afflicted by a degree of willfulness that can fray my patience until only a single, slender strand holds it together. In these moments, my patience hanging int he abyss, I find it helpful to remind myself that this did not just happen. Our boys did not just decide to be opinionated and occasionally obstinate. Oh, no. They learned it from us."

Ben Hewitt, Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World

this week in my kitchen

We had a big feast on Monday… Canadian Thanksgiving. This was my first time being responsible for the whole feast, although it was really a trial run, since we only had our wee nuclear family plus one friend to feed. We had a ridiculous amount of food and it was really nice. Since then I've made turkey soup, extra turkey broth, turkey curry and tonight will be a sort of made-up shepherd's pie with (what else?) turkey.



The cranberry sauce rocked, if I do say so myself. I added pear, apple cider, cardamom, garam masala and ginger. I will definitely do that again.



I made a gluten-free version of the Party Plum Cake in More Food That Really Shmecks. Pretty good, although I won't do the crumb topping next time.
















Playing along with In My Kitchen.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

So this just happened

I've just come home from the farmer's market. My husband and I have been going there every Saturday morning pretty much since we met in 1999. Over those fifteen years, we've watched people's kids grow up, and people have watched our kids grow in my belly like a strange watermelon, arrive outside, and grow up to the active and curious eight and three-year-olds, respectively. The last few weeks I've noticed a new crop of watermelons and pumpkins bulging under women's shirts. It could be a great way to steal something big and round like that.

 I used to whine that we have no community, because we don't really have the kinds of friends you go away with for fun weekends or who you can call when you need help suddenly. But I've been realizing that we do have community. Not great friends, but maybe that is partly the stage of life we're at with our young children. But we go to the market and say hi to the people we see every week. Eldest buys his own breakfast sandwich from the in-house vendor, and conducts his own transactions. I know he's safe there.

Other ways I see community have been at our community garden, where on work days they let Eldest push full wheelbarrows (that's one of his favourite jobs) and they truly appreciate his contribution. Or at our CSA pick-up, where Eldest unloads the truck with a dolly and does at least as much work as me to set up and take it down as part of our work share. And again, the people who run it honour his contribution. This is it. This is the stuff.

But today my hands are shaky and my eyes are hot and there is a deep, terrified ache in my chest. My three-year-old and I went to buy the tortilla chips we buy every week as a treat. He ran ahead and I was a bit concerned because he can move among the crowd much faster than me, but I kept seeing his bright orange shirt and I figured he'd stop at the chips. But he didn't. He ran right past them and kept running. I called out that he'd ran past them but he was too far ahead to hear.

Then suddenly I couldn't see him anymore. He had to be in the building, right? But there was a wide open door right next to where I'd last seen him, which opened to the sidewalk of a very busy street, and another wide open door on the other side of the building that led to the parking lot with more vendors and then anywhere. My mind couldn't go there. Of course he wouldn't go outside. I looked out anyways but didn't see his little orange shirt anywhere.

I started yelling his name and a woman near me, a vendor, heard me and started looking. When I started describing him, she said, “Oh I know your son!” like I didn't even need to describe him. Even though I don't think I've ever bought anything from her. She started looking too.

I went outside... maybe he could have gone there after all. I called but I couldn't see him. Went back inside and thought I needed to get my husband looking too, but he was all the way at the other end of the building and I couldn't leave the spot I'd last seen Youngest. I'd left my phone at home so I couldn't even text him.

I yelled louder, to anyone who might listen and help. “Ive lost my three-year-old! He's got a bright orange shirt on and brown curly hair!” And then a friend of mine was in front of me. “He's outside, I think. I just saw him.” And she took me outside and he was around the corner a bit just sitting on a bench on the sidewalk. He looked totally calm. My friend said she had noticed him but hadn't recognized him without me there. She had wondered who he was with though. And when she heard me say I'd lost him, she knew immediately.

I would never have looked there, I'm sure. The only way I found him was because someone knew him. That's the stuff.

As for me, I'm sure I'll recover eventually, although mothering this kid seems to just keep traumatizing me again and again. But that's a whole other story.

Friday, October 10, 2014

in my kitchen

I'm going to play along with This Week in My Kitchen. It seems to be the only place I'm taking pictures these days, although soon that will likely stop when the days get too short to prepare dinner in natural light. For now, though… here are a few.
I've just realized that every single one of these photos has at least one and often several of my thrift store finds…



The start of zucchini-plum chutney